Falling in Love Read Online Free PDF

He couldn’t
get it going again. He was another one with no snow tires. He and
the wife were very apologetic. She was legally blind or maybe she
would have been able to answer while they kept going. They’d been
meaning to get around to buying snow tires.
    Two in a row.
    She’d seen a few of them
lately.
    Dispatch advised her to hold up in a
central location.
    Proceeding north on Pontiac Road, a
north-south gravel side-road with no houses for several kilometres
in each direction, there was a car coming towards her. She kept
well to the right in the blowing, drifting snow flurries, checking
her rear-view mirror as the oncoming car passed her patrol vehicle.
It was all open fields out here, and there was nothing to stop the
snow from drifting across the road. Her car punched through the
small drifts with ease.
    The other vehicle seemed to be going
pretty slow, and with a quick look in the side-mirror, she noted
the light over the rear license plate was burned out.
    There were no houses and hence no
driveways along this stretch. What were they doing there at all? It
was the middle of nowhere. She backed off and slowed down. She
managed a three-point turn, keeping it on the hard surface, which
with gravel sticking out and frozen into it, had pretty good
traction. She set off in cautious pursuit.
    The small silver car stopped at the
next intersection. He signaled and then turned left. There was
nothing down there for at least a couple of kilometres.
    Again, the vehicle didn’t seem to be
going very fast. It was an eighty kilometre per hour zone. Most
people did go a bit faster than that, even in the worst conditions
sometimes. They knew what they could get away with consistently.
Laine gradually came up close behind the vehicle and then hit the
lights.
    The driver pulled over immediately,
doing a nice, calm, professional job of it with no games and no
hesitation.
     
    ***
     
    After reading off the license plate
for dispatch and listening for a moment, Laine hung up the
dashboard microphone, and stepped out of the car. They had nothing
on the registered owner. The owner was a local resident. A ten
year-old car, it was really not a desirable item for
thieves.
    It was best to keep an open mind,
though
    She kept her hand on her holster and
approached the driver’s door. There appeared to be only one
occupant.
    “ May I see your driver’s
license, ownership and insurance, please?”
    “ Ah, yes
Ma’am.”
    His hands were a bit shaky, but then
she could smell it and he’d have to be some kind of a fool not to
know it.
    She took the documents back to her car
for study.
    They appeared to be in order, all
matching up nicely. The driver’s license photo more or less
resembled the driver. Proper identification was a must. She
notified the dispatcher.
    “ He’s been burning a blunt
or something. I’m going to ask him to step out.”
    “ Roger that, Unit Nine.
Fourteen’s not far.”
    “ Thank you.”
    She approached the driver’s door
again.
    “ Sir, I’ll have to ask you
to please step out of the vehicle.”
    The door opened and the man got out.
He was half a head taller than her. Caucasian, brown hair, brown
eyes. Good chin. He looked her in the eye, and raised his eyebrows.
He gave a funny little sigh when he looked at her. She kind of
liked that for some reason.
    “ Would you mind stepping
around to the back of the vehicle.”
    “ Yes, Ma’am.”
    She had him wait there, with the
lights of the cruiser full on him. He seemed pretty cooperative.
She took out her flashlight, and tried to keep her hand on her
holster, which was arguably impossible when you were bending over
and off balance. Nuts. Laine was a pretty good judge of characters
and situations after a few years on the job.
    She bent in and opened up the
glove-box.
    She checked the little compartment in
the console and shone her light in the floor-wells of the back
seat. She could clearly see him out through the rear window,
standing patiently at ease, with